Kevin Koss

Marie Antoinette gets all the attention for getting her head chopped off, but in the Czech Republic, they just threw the King out the window, which is where the term defenestration comes from.

It also happens to be the name for the site specific art piece, located at the corner of Sixth and Howard Streets  in an abandoned four-story tenement building. You know, the one with all the furniture coming out the windows. Well the site is scheduled to be demolished and replaced with affordable housing. The building is the focus of a lawsuit, you can learn more in an article in today’s SF Examiner. 

Seems to me the city should rebuild the spot, but with the same artist doing a similar installation. It is pretty unique to our city. It should be preserved, but the building should not.

Just saw the movie Julie and Julia. Pretty great, Meryl Streep is excellent. You forget it is her playing Julia. Whilst watching the movie, they mentioned a few books, one of which I recognize from my days at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park: Larousse Gastronomique

These guys are SF locals.

Automated craigslist search alerts. Very cool.

From the Rebuild Potrero website, bottom line no earlier than 2012.

In order to begin construction we will need to complete the master planning phase. We hope to have a completed master plan at the end of this year, 2009. In 2010 we will submit the master plan for planning and environmental review. We expect planning and environmental review to take a year and be completed at the end of 2010. In 2011 we will begin work on the detailed construction documents for the infrastructure improvements. Those plans will need to be reviewed by the Public Works department. In 2011 we will also begin design work on the first phase building designs. Those plans will need to be submitted for planning review and to the building department for permits. Given these steps, we anticipate that the earliest construction start for the infrastructure improvements will be 2012, with building construction beginning in 2013.

In your book “The Foodie Handbook” you say one of the top 10 ways to know a restaurant is bad is if they serve dishes with black truffle in the summer. We were just in Paris and went to Guy Savoy and Joel Robuchon’s  L’Atelier, both of which had black truffle on the menu in June.

So they are not foodies then?

Opening

Mazu: 3809 Geary Blvd. at 2nd Ave.
PIZZERIA AVELLINO 2769 Lombard St. at Lyon

More unrestaurant twitterness: http://twitter.com/kungfutacos

More

If you haven’t been to Pizza Nostra in Potrero and had the pizza with the egg on it……what are you waiting for?

Fits perfectly, almost like the car was tailored for the driveway.

The NY Times just ran an article about all the Peruvian restaurants in SF. They probably needed to give Limon more credit for solidifying this trend. They mention the Pisco Sours at Le Mar. If you haven’t had one, you need to get down there and sit at the bar and enjoy!

In today’s SFGATE there is an interesting article on the Mission Bay area.

Highlights:

• Only about 35% built (!)
• 1/2 of UCSF buildings built
• 6000 more homes going in
• 43-acre UCSF campus that includes a 550-bed hospital, 41 acres of new parkland, 4.4 million square feet of biotech and lab space
• 500,000 square feet of retail shops
• 500-room hotel and a public school

And here I thought they were almost done!